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Encyclopedia - Trench Rats

For many veterans who were
asked to recall their memories of
life in the trenches the overriding
feature that lingered in the mind was the problem - and horror - of trench
rats.

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Rats - brown and black - thrived literally in
their millions among trenches in most Fronts of the war, be it Eastern,
Italian, Gallipoli - but primarily the Western Front. Trench
conditions were ideal for rats. Empty food cans were piled in their
thousands throughout No Man's Land, heaved over the top on a daily basis.

Aside from feeding from
rotting food littered in such cans, rats would invade dug-outs in search of
food and shelter. Most soldiers who served on the Western Front would
later recall how rats grew in boldness, stealing food that had been lain
down for just a few moments. Rats would also crawl across the face of
sleeping men.

As they gorged themselves
on food so they grew, with many rats reportedly growing to the size of cats.
George
Coppard, writing in With a Machine Gun to Cambrai (1969),
recalled the ceaseless rattling of tin cans during the night, the sound of
rats constantly ferreting in No Man's Land.

However the feature which
caused revulsion among soldiers was the knowledge that rats openly fed on
the decaying remains of comrades killed while advancing across No Man's
Land. Attacking - and eating - the eyes of a corpse first, rats would
steadily work their way through the remainder of the body in a short space
of time.

Disgusted and often feeling
a horror of their presence, soldiers would devise various means of dealing
with the rat problem. Although shooting at rats was strictly
prohibited - it being regarded as a pointless waste of ammunition - many
soldiers nevertheless took pot shots at nearby rats in this manner.
Attacking rats with bayonets was also common. However the rat
population was not noticeably diminished by such techniques - a pair of rats
were capable of producing some 800 offspring within a single year.

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Saturday, 22 August, 2009Michael Duffy

The "Red Baron" was the allied nickname for German air ace Manfred von Richthofen, the leading ace of the war.